welcome, icy clarity

Ah, to finally be past the emotional funfair that is August - with its wild carnival laughter, colours, a bewildered heart - and safely land in the ordered world of September!

The memories of hot sand, summer nailpolish, whirling ideas and cool grass are fading. I note that I did some of the things I had planned for this summer. There were mojitos, friends, drives through lush fields, the saving of a seagull chick, excited smiles on my mother's face, walks among fragrant pine trees, boat trips beyond the horizon, exploration of things unknown, Netflixing alone in the cabin between the sea and the forest, love and languages.

I still welcome the chilly nights of now, the starry skies dripping ice. The smell of the gym I haven't set foot in for months, the pilates balls, the dancing shoes, the volleyball men with their muscles and the exhilaration of sweating off all that sadness. The delicious lunches in the cafeteria at work, the business meetings around laptops, wry smiles, plans. The new knowledge that is placed before me, the Excel charts and the music course and all the books I haven't read. Beautiful clothes. The feeling of setting off.

I loved the summer but I was lost and confused. I mourn the loss of a hot sun and birdsong, of being so close to nature that I can hear it breathe.

 I revel in making schedules with early morning work and evening classes, and the peace that comes with sticking to them.

Welcome, icy clarity of autumn.

just the essentials, please

I crave velvety loose-fit trousers, cocktails, beachvolley weather, adventure and love.

my Sunday rest

Dreary is the word for the place - a worn-down, bleak school on a cold afternoon when icy rain is lashing down.

It's Sunday but the school is not entirely deserted. In the gym hall, two teams of young girl are playing a mean game of volleyball. I buy a cup of bitter coffee from a stand their parents have set up outside and join the handful of spectators. My friend whispers comments on the girls' sets and spikes, another friend shows up briefly to share a joke or two.

The girls are very loud - their shouts and shrieks of joy echo in the bare hall - and the hall is poorly heated. It's not the environment I would choose for an afternoon of desperately needed rest. Still, as I cradle my hot coffee in cold hands and watch the intense game, my mind stops spinning and a feeling of calm settles me down.

A bar of chocolate completes the afternoon.

if you're gonna jump, then jump far

We are losing our volleyball game, even though our team is playing really well.
We seem to be losing more often than ever, even as I feel my own strength growing and my skills improving. My hatred of losing stays the same.

Our team today is a motley collection of women that I play with every week and women I see twice a year (at these volleyball tournaments). There is a thin teenager who will probably be playing at national level in a few years and middle-aged amateurs like myself. This is what I like about volleyball: there are women who seem to be approaching sixty, and women who are short and fat, and they are still very good at this game that seems to favour the tall and powerful. Better than me. Maybe I can still play when I'm old and fat.

Our team picks up the serve - one of the weaker players fumbles with the ball but somebody else helps and the teenager hammers it over the net.

Some parts of my body are starting to fail. My hitting arm protests with pain and my knees hurt after half a lifetime of jumping. I need to stop playing volleyball and do something about this before my legs refuse to carry me anymore. As I focus on today's game, I know it is my last for a while. I won't really miss these tournaments - I always seem to leave them in a huff after yet another defeat.

The team sets up a beautiful opportunity for a spike. I forget my knees and my shoulder and jump like a cat. My spike is, for once, perfect. Hard enough to crush bones. It bounces off a defender's arms and comes back to me in an ideal arc. I jump again, halfway to heaven, and immediately make the kill. It is lovely. I feel stronger and better than ever.

We are losing the game and I'm sure I will walk away in a huff, on wobbly knees. But at the moment I and my team-mates are having too much fun to care.

food levels in December

In the month before Christmas, there is an inexpensive meal of rice pudding and bacon rolls in a crowded church basement where I discuss gospel music with friends.

There is a meal of burgers and beer in a colourful, mock-Australian restaurant with equally colourful volleyball ladies.

There is a loud family party with birthday cake and teenagers who roll their eyes.

And there is a festive business lunch with men in suits and women in heels, with mentions of turnovers and quality control and expensive boats.

There are so many levels in my December life.

the games that play us

* Volleyball. Forever and ever the love of my life. Started in fifth or sixth grade thanks to a wise teacher called Runar, in a small and dark gym. Throughout the rest of my school years volleyball was my only extra-curricular activity - when I could be bothered to go. We had two coaches: one who put us through murderous hours of practising technique, one who didn't know much technique but let us play around and have fun. Not until one of my last school years did we actually get to play against any other teams. With the exception of my Irish years, I've played since then. Always just for fun.

* The main sports of PE classes: ice skating and skiing in winter, pesäpallo (Finnish version of baseball) in spring and autumn. The ice skating was sometimes combined with playing bandy, which was fun. The skiing was the cross-country kind where we were basically let loose on the skiing tracks in nearby forests without supervision. This always turned into a competition and I always finished among the last, so no good memories there (having to lug the heavy skiing equipment to and from school didn't help). I wasn't very good at pesäpallo either and was always one of the last to be picked for a team, but it was kind of fun.

* Badminton, during one or two quiet winters in the Irish mountains. My childhood game turned out to be a good way to kill time and get to know the Irish.

* Dance, during a few years at university, and zumba, which I bravely threw myself into much later (when it became a thing).

* Swimming: exercise on hot summer days.

* Running, cycling and weight-lifting: necessary evils that I avoid until I can't.

* Horse riding and tap dancing: hobbies I wish I had. One is too expensive, the other nobody seems to be doing anymore. Why?

sand love

There is nothing better you can do on a hot summer's day than watch the beachvolley championships.

Except maybe play beachvolley.

Especially when you have friends with you who like strawberry drinks as much as you do.

whole and laughing

A gang of handsome men burst into laughter when I spectacularly dropped the ball during a volleyball game today.

I grinned and took a bow. Then I did a little dance that was at once self-mocking and genuinely joyful.

This is a miracle.

Some years ago, I was a shattered soul who cowered whenever people laughed around me, convinced I was once again the butt of their jokes. I usually was. For many of my early teenage years, verbal and psychological abuse was thrown at me every day in school. I learned the hard way to never trust anyone's smile and to assume the worst at the sound of laughter.

Can you go on to live a trusting, loving life as an adult after that?

I don't know how, but I know I am. In all the years after that, my life has been crowded with women who entrust me with their darkest secrets and men who love me deeply and aren't afraid to say so. I don't really know where they came from so I have to say they were sent by heaven.

When guys I barely know start laughing in the volleyball court, I don't get that horrible, terrifying coldness inside. I laugh with them, somehow incongruously (and probably somewhat mistakenly) assuming they all adore me - and even if they don't, that nothing they do or say can really hurt me.

During those awful, lonely years I prayed many times for God to save me. He didn't exactly smite my oppressors. At the time, anyway. And I was never much of a fighter myself.

But not so many years later, this soul of mine that I thought was destroyed has a diamond core. It is whole and safe and feeling loved.

It shouldn't be possible. I think God gave me a miracle.


No power of hell, no scheme of man 
can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home, 
here in the power of Christ I stand

(excerpt from song "In Christ Alone" by Getty/Townend)

today's the day Camus and Väinö Linna meet

I am an anxious soul so here's today's reminder of what I actually have:

Spiced coffee. A cosily messy flat, lit by tiny warm lamps in every corner. A friend who calls to say we have a hall booked for indoors beachvolley tonight.

I get to feel sand between my toes again! "In the midst of winter, I found there was, in the tiny Finnish hamlet of Karkkimala, an invincible summer."

And I'm working on subtitles for a TV show with famous quotes from the classic movie The Unknown Soldier. Tulta munil!


... With apologies to Albert Camus for the mangled quote above. To continue in his own, mostly unmangled - though translated - words; "And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger - something better, pushing right back".)

is it right to call them players?

The male version of the  volleyball tournament  was indeed a more genial affair than its female counterpart.

Much less shrieking and shouting, at least. Perhaps less emotion. Or the emotion might have been of a purer sort of joy or frustration, which is vented in one single burst and then forgotten. There was plenty of joking both within and between teams.

When the women were playing, yesterday, there were sour comments whispered about that team nobody liked. There were a few arguments with the referee, some vicious glaring and a number of arrogant attitudes being thrown around.

Or maybe that was all in my imagination. Perhaps I saw arrogance where there were only strong wills and a healthy fighting spirit. My own bad attitude ( hopefully well hidden ) might have influenced my perception of things.

All I know is that I was in a great mood when I arrived at the ladies' volleyball tournament to play with my team. Within two minutes of arriving, somebody looked at me the wrong way and I suddenly hated everything. Our team finished second, after the team I hated most of all, and I went home and cried.

In the men's tournament today I was helping my friends in the men's team that never has quite enough men. A great day, lots of laughter. Winning seemed only natural. And it was.

a spike of emotion

Second day of volleyball tournament. This time for the men, yesterday was for the ladies.

Sure hope the atmosphere yours truly will be less bitchy today.

just add ice to injury

Ingredients in my recent life:

* A book that injured my hand. It goes on and on, and it's weird, and it weighs a ton and my hand continues to hurt because I can't put it down (Chronic City by J. Lethem).
* Rumours of a fox in the city.
* Skidding on ice with a Citroën that insists all the lights are broken.
* Statistics.
* The two Marias, who converge in a busy urban lunchplace like rarely seen angels and ply me with memories of another life.
* The Pillars of the Earth on DVD - how (not) to build a cathedral, always a good thing to know.
* ( Although I play a lot of volleyball but don't hang out much with volleyball people ) I had a weekend like this: Friday night party with volleyball gang, Saturday night girls' night in with volleyball girls ( and a bizarre combination of strong green booze and non-alcoholic Blue Nun, hard to say which one was worse ), Sunday afternoon drive with volleyball man, Sunday night volleyball game with crowds of volleyball people.
* Exhaustion. I just want to be quiet and alone.

poetry in motion (and icecream)

Another slow day in a cool, quiet office...

At the strike of 4 pm I will be out of here. This evening will be spent in the stands watching the beachvolley championships. There will be a hot sun and loud music. There will also be exciting action and some really good icecream.

Not to mention some incredibly beautiful and inspiring people.

the hearing-aid flirt

Got chatted up, at work, by a customer. A guy who had to be pushing 80. Oh well, mustn't be picky. His hearing aid wasn't really working so we conducted our little flirt half-shouting, to the amusement of other customers.

Now I'm gearing up to go play volleyball with the lads. The other two girls who normally play are away, so I will be the only one balancing up all that testosterone-fuelled, here's-for-all-the-frustrations-of-the-week, Friday night male aggression.

home and breathing

Finding oneself is bloody hard work.

Not that I'm not myself in my daily life, pottering around in the shop, stopping by the grocery shop for bananas and eggs on my way home, listening to the chatter in the changing room before volleyball practice.

It's life and it's mine and I need it. But it's the real world, and I'm only at home among dreams. Whether I believe in them or not.

So I have to come home and look out over the bay, power up the laptop, and breathe deeply.

blood, sweat and tears of laughter

"I have blood all over me and I don't know whose it is."

The aftermath of a particularly vicious volleyball game can be disturbing for sensitive viewers. But I washed the blood off me and reflected on the fact that I had almost died on that court - of laughter. And we lost the game.

transcendence, or how God tries to woo me

* Birdsong in the mornings when I walk to work or open the balcony door - even in midwinter, even when it's 25 degrees below freezing point.
* A day off, lounging on the couch with a coffee mug. Watching spring clouds or a bleak winter sun - sticking close to the horizon - move across the sky, taking their time. In no hurry anywhere, just being what they are: glorious.
* A bathtub, candlelight and Bach.
* Ireland.
* Taking a break from a grey, anguished, everyday life and sitting down at a café table. Being comforted by caffeine and a sugar rush, watching people walk by and having important thoughts just come to me. Or even just retiring to the dismal staff room at work and pouring myself a cup of hot black coffee, feeling as if this is a tiny moment of grace.
* Pubs.
* Ancient vaults surrounding me as I feel centuries of human life rush by.
* Music that overwhelms me, classical and modern at once.
* A walk through a foreign landscape.
* A smile and a touch from someone admirable.
* Experiencing the flow of creating / learning / doing something I'm good at / spiking a volleyball.
* A long drive, alone with music.
* Summer evenings by the sea, with a bottle of wine.
* The moment when I realise that someone knows exactly how I feel.
* The feeling of rebellion and freedom and being strong - I might have to explore that one further.

when I learned to spell Choszczno

Poland, in the '90s.

Summer heat makes the pavement soggy and minds foggy. Fairly clueless foreign teenagers sing in the streets for mildly interested Poles.

I sing my heart out, giggle when people give us money, long for an icecream and drown in the dark eyes of a Polish boy named Robert. New friends try to teach me the language, the icecream costs us thousands of zlotys and nights are spent sleeping on couches and floors.

We rehearse a dance routine by the tall, rundown apartment buildings where we live, while our host family's poodle begs us for snacks. Our hostess cooks us strange food in the tiny, muggy flat with the lace curtains. We take a canoe trip along silent lakes and creeks overgrown with the lushness of high summer and share baskets of cherries. We spend cooler evenings on the basketball and volleyball courts with youngsters from the neighbourhood. I have my heart broken by Robert of the dark eyes but I have friends who hug me, tease me and make me laugh with their weird plans of touring in a Fiat Polski. I realise that the strange people of Eastern Europe are fun, warm-hearted, wise and do know how to do a decent volleyball spike.

may the force be with me

When I slam the volleyball down on the opposite side of the net and I really got it right this time and all my energy erupts in that single moment... I can hear a choir of angels sing. Peace and good will and God's favour.

the landing is never easy

Jumping, in volleyball, is really flying. At least when you put your heart and every little one of your muscles into it and forget about everything except hitting that ball. Feels like being up there in the air forever.

And then you land on your team mate's foot and you try not to land at all but inevitably feel your ankle twist. And hurt.

Happened to me yesterday, and now I hobble around with a cane as my new best friend. But people are giving me sympathy and chocolates and I get to lie on the couch and read books.